Saturday, February 16, 2008

1864

United States presidential election, 1864
8 November 1864




Nominee Abraham Lincoln George B. McClellan
Party National Union Party Democratic
Home state Illinois Pennsylvania
Running mate Andrew Johnson George Hunt Pendleton
Electoral vote 212 21
States carried 22 3
Popular vote 2,218,388 1,812,807
Percentage 55.0% 45.0%


United States presidential election, 1864

Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Lincoln/Johnson, Red denotes those won by McClellan/Pendleton, Brown denotes Confederate States. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.

Incumbent
Abraham Lincoln
Republican

Successor
Abraham Lincoln
National Union Party

The United States presidential election of 1864 saw Abraham Lincoln win by a landslide. Lincoln was a Republican but he ran on a coalition ticket with the "War Democrats." The coalition ticket was known as the National Union Party.

Lincoln ran against his former top Civil War general, the Democratic candidate, George B. McClellan, and the Radical Republican Party candidate, John C. Frémont. McClellan was the "peace candidate" but did not personally believe in his party's platform. Frémont abandoned his political campaign in September 1864, after he brokered a political deal in which Lincoln removed U.S. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair from office.

The election of 1864 was conducted during the Civil War, and as such, none of the states which made up the Confederate states participated.

Republicans across the country were jittery during the summer of 1864. Confederate forces had triumphed at the Battle of Mansfield and the Battle of the Crater. In addition, the war was continuing to take a very high toll. The prospect of a long, never-ending war started to make the "negotiated peace" offered by the Democrats look more desirable. But then the Democrats had to confront the severe internal strains within their party at the Democratic National Convention. Finally, with William Tecumseh Sherman marching inexorably toward Atlanta and Ulysses S. Grant pushing Lee into the outer defenses of Richmond, it became increasingly obvious that a Union military victory was inevitable and close at hand.

The Lincoln/Johnson ticket ran with the slogan “Don't change horses in the middle of a stream.” The Republican party name was changed to Union, to appeal to War Democrats; the new name vanished after the election. Johnson, however, never became a Republican.

The Republican/Union party made an all-out effort to depict the Democrats in the worse way possible. They ridiculed McClellan for his pacifist platform and denounced Democrats as traitorous Copperheads. On November 8, Lincoln won by over 400,000 popular votes and easily clinched an electoral majority. Several states allowed their citizens serving as soldiers in the field to cast ballots, a first in United States history. Soldiers in the Army gave Lincoln more than 70% of their vote.

Contents

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[edit] Nominations

[edit] "National Union Party" nomination

Abraham Lincoln was renominated by the Republican Party, which changed its name for the 1864 election to the "National Union Party”. Thus, the Republican Party temporarily passed out of existence. Lincoln's nomination was not unanimous, however, as 22 disgruntled opponents of Lincoln voted for Ulysses S. Grant, who was not a candidate. Seeing an opportunity to work with the War Democrats under the Union banner, the convention nominated Military-Governor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a War Democrat, as Lincoln's running mate over incumbent Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and three other War Democrats - former New York Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, Buchanan cabinet member Joseph Holt and General Ben Butler.

National Union (Republican) Party poster for Pennsylvania in 1864
National Union (Republican) Party poster for Pennsylvania in 1864

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

Democratic candidates

The Democratic Party was bitterly split between the War Democrats and the anti-war Copperheads. The compromise was to nominate pro-war General George B. McClellan along with an anti-war platform. McClellan defeated Horatio Seymour and others for the nomination; he and ticketmate George H. Pendleton were nominated on a peace platform[1] — a platform McClellan personally rejected.[2]

[edit] General election

The 1864 election was the first time since 1812 that a presidential election took place during a war. McClellan's chances of victory faded after Union victories in Georgia and Virginia, followed by the withdrawal of John C. Fremont's Radical Republican Party candidacy.

A foretaste of the national election came in the state elections held in the months prior to the presidential election. In these six state elections (Oregon on 6/5, Vermont on 9/6, Maine on 9/11, Ohio and Pennsylvania on 10/10, and West Virginia on 10/26), the Union Republican Party won a sweeping victory. These six states elected 44 Union Republicans in U.S. House races, compared to just 10 Democrats, for a net gain of 18 seats for the Union Republicans. The stage had been set for Lincoln.

[edit] Results

Only 24 states participated, because 11 had seceded from the Union and claimed to have formed their own nation: the Confederate States of America (CSA). Three new states participated for the first time: Nevada, West Virginia, and Kansas. The reconstructed portions of Tennessee and Louisiana elected presidential Electors, although Congress did not count their votes.

Presidential Candidate Party Home State Popular Vote(a) Electoral
Vote(a), (b)		 Running Mate Running Mate's
Home State		 RM's Electoral
Vote(a), (b)
Count Pct
Abraham Lincoln National Union(c) Illinois 2,218,388 55.0% 212 Andrew Johnson(c) Tennessee 212
George Brinton McClellan Democratic New Jersey 1,812,807 45.0% 21 George Hunt Pendleton Ohio 21
Other 692 0.0% – Other –
Total 4,031,887 100 % 233
233
Needed to win 117
117

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1864 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 27, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).

(a) The states in rebellion did not participate in the election of 1864.
(b) One Elector from Nevada did not vote
(c) Andrew Johnson had been a Democrat, and after 1869 was a Democrat. The Republicans did not run a presidential candidate in 1864 but formed the National Union Party to accommodate the War Democrats.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Harold M. Dudley. "The Election of 1864," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Mar., 1932) , pp. 500-518 full text in JSTOR
  • David E. Long. Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-election and the End of Slavery (1994)
  • Merrill, Louis Taylor. "General Benjamin F. Butler in the Presidential Campaign of 1864." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33 (March 1947): 537-70 full text in JSTOR
  • Nelson, Larry E. Bullets, Ballots, and Rhetoric: Confederate Policy for the United States Presidential Contest of 1864 University of Alabama Press, 1980.
  • Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: The War for the Union vol 8 (1971)
  • Randall, James G. and Richard N. Current. Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure. Vol. 4 of Lincoln the President. 1955.
  • Vorenberg, Michael. "'The Deformed Child': Slavery and the Election of 1864" Civil War History 2001 47(3): 240-257. ISSN 0009-8078 full text in JSTOR
  • Jack Waugh Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency (1998), a popular study
  • White, Jonathan W. "Canvassing the Troops: the Federal Government and the Soldiers' Right to Vote" Civil War History 2004 50(3): 291-317. ISSN 0009-8078

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ 1864 Democratic Platform
  2. ^ George B. McClellan. Ohio History Central. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.

[edit] External links

[edit] Navigation

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